In the US alone, around twelve billion web searches are made on an average per month. This year, SEO has been gaining importance above everything else as it assists you in getting quality traffic, visibility, brand boost and credibility for the success of your business. The main reason you created this amount of quality content and graphics is for your audience, hence you have to make sure that they are visible to them when they enter relevant search queries. Even last year, marketers fully understood the potential and value of SEO, due to which they began aligning content to the needs of their customers, bringing in mobile optimization for great results. In order to be on top of the search engine result pages, you have to up your SEO game this year.

Wondering what kind of SEO trends are going to remain ‘in’ for the rest of the year? Here are our top SEO trends from 2016 that can give your business a serious boost for the rest of the year.

1. Mobile Optimization

In this age of smartphones, tabs and portable devices, your audience is no longer sitting in front of desktops all the time. Tablets, laptops, phones, smart watches etc. are being used to browse the web as your audience goes out for dinner, travels cross country or even travels overseas. Therefore, it is a must for your website to become mobile friendly in order to garner more interest. Keeping this factor in mind, a lot of brands decided to have mobile friendly websites since early 2016. Mobile optimization is gearing towards becoming the norm rather than the exception to the rule. Hence, it is best to change the way you create and conceptualize SEO strategies for the mobile searches your audience might be making.

This boost in mobile optimization is by dint of Google’s latest algorithm update this year. Mobile friendly websites were given a search rank boost on the mobile searches. Also, total mobile searches have gone up by 43% this year. Hence, mobile friendliness has become an important factor that decides the ranking of search results. Socialmediatoday.com states that around 70% of mobile searches lead to almost immediate online action, that too within the first hour. Hence make sure that every aspect of your website, from font to color to content, are mobile optimized for maximum impact.

2. Social Content

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter will gain more prominence on the SERPs this year. In order to boost and support their SEO, more than 76% of marketers rely on social media. It is evident that marketers are doing everything in their power to make their social posts rank higher on the SERPs. Social media content can be indexed on popular search engines, helping to blur the lines between ‘social media’ and mainstream web in SEO strategic terms. Hence, this is high time to procure and search out valuable social content in order to get your page optimized for maximum views. Search for any brand name, say ‘Designhill’ on Google and you will see that the social media pages of the company appear in the first few names of the top listings. These social networks help the search engines understand which websites have credibility and should be ranked better.

3. Content Aggregation

85% of Google search results are made up of wiki, knowledge graph, maps, local, news, social media, videos and images according to Digitalcurrent.com. This gigantic percentage states that people now search for sources of all kinds of relevant information on a particular topic in one place. Content aggregation is therefore a practical way of collating, finding, consolidating, amassing, sharing, displaying and presenting content around a pre set criteria that can appeal to target audiences. If you too are planning to bring all the information about your business to one place, ensure that you curate and collect content from various high authority sources. Display them in one place to make sure that your users see where you stand. A bright example of that would be Inbound.org- the brainchild of Hubspot and Moz which increased their reach further.

4. Local SEO

We really cannot stress this enough when we say that local search is gaining traction this year. Growing stronger as the days go by, local search is leading 50% of visitors on mobile devices to visit store locations within a single day. Not just that, more than 60% of customers have searched for local information in ads. As a business owner and marketer, you have to let the search engines know your location and the services you are offering. This increases your chances of being shown on pages in front of a relevant audience pool. Hence, it is a must to have your local pages include the name of your business, your location etc. with major search engines.

Accelerated through Google’s Pigeon update, local SEO has gained more importance than ever before, forcing marketers and businesses to focus on a local audience. It is best to include personalized content, location specific keywords etc. on the basis of what your target audience’s location is. Staying ahead of the game this year will depend on local searches heavily as 50% of mobile searches are conducted hoping for local results. This is the reason why you should combine the strength of mobile SEO with your local search.

5. Mobile Apps

52% time spent online has been taken up by mobile applications according to Tech Crunch, while some other agencies claim that this online time taken up by mobile apps can be as high as 89%. This is the chief reason behind businesses expanding to mobile applications. The advantage of having a mobile app for your business is that it will help your audience instantly access all your details and services from a centralized location. Also, the use of mobile search has been the highest ever. Apps just makes this rate go up higher. In an article featured in searchenginejournal.com, 85% of people would rather use native mobile applications than websites. Hence, get your brand prominently featured using an app and ensure that your website has proper links to the app for better rankings on search. App optimization should also be on top priority in your SEO optimization strategy.

These growing trends of 2016 are sure to give your website an extra boost, thereby helping your business grow and attract more potential customers.